The question if humans can communicate via pheromones in the same way as animals is under debate. Cell physiologists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have demonstrated that the odorous substance Hedione activates the putative ...

By directly recording electrical activity from the human brain, neuroscientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that distinct, distant groups of brain areas that support memory retrieval act in concert, ...

Sleep has profound importance in our lives, such that we spend a considerable proportion of our time engaging in it. Sleep enables the body, including the brain, to recover metabolically, but contemporary research has been ...

Brain activity affects the way the developing brain connects neurons and a study by researchers at the School of Medicine on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children's Hospital Colorado suggests a new ...

Why are some people able to master a new skill quickly while others require extra time or practice? That was the question posed by UC Santa Barbara's Scott Grafton and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns ...

(MedicalXpress)—Resting state networks (RSNs) in the brain are topographies of neural structures between which lag states propagate due to fluctuations of physical and other activities. Studying these networks reveals information ...

Electroencephalography

Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. In neurology, the main diagnostic application of EEG is in the case of epilepsy, as epileptic activity can create clear abnormalities on a standard EEG study. A secondary clinical use of EEG is in the diagnosis of coma and encephalopathies. EEG used to be a first-line method for the diagnosis of tumors, stroke and other focal brain disorders, but this use has decreased with the advent of anatomical imaging techniques such as MRI and CT.

Derivatives of the EEG technique include evoked potentials (EP), which involves averaging the EEG activity time-locked to the presentation of a stimulus of some sort (visual, somatosensory, or auditory). Event-related potentials refer to averaged EEG responses that are time-locked to more complex processing of stimuli; this technique is used in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiological research.